Counter trays are a game changer

[larsdangly]

I was setting up to play today and realized I've become overwhelmed by the dozens and dozens of little bags containing my TFT counters - it is surprisingly hard to see what's in them at a glance, and mine, at least, are jumbled into a slippery random pile. When I organize them into bigger bags, I find I can't see much of anything and spend minutes fishing around for what I want.

So, I took an hour to re-organize the whole mess into some counter trays I repurposed from my old Squad Leader collection, and the whole situation is transformed: It only took 4 trays to hold every 1" counter from my double-set of the Legacy Edition counter sheets plus the sheets from new TFT Adventures volume. I stuck my multi-hex counters into big bags that all sit together in one of the organizing boxes, but that's no problem - there are only a few sub-types and they are all perfectly visible in the box. I feel like I just hugely dropped the activation energy to running sessions.

Now off to game!

[Axly Suregrip]

I did something similar. I purchased from Home Depot a small-parts-storage bin with lots of compartments to contain the counters. It was about $6. It even has one large space for the big monsters.

[Shostak]

Indeed. A megahex organizer is pretty useful, too.

[larsdangly]

How did you organize your megahexes? I split mine in two halves (everything 2MH and larger in one box, everything 1 MH and smaller in the other). That is o.k., but not ideal. Better would be a 1 hex bin, 2 hex bin, etc. up to the really big pieces. And the biggest ones are probably better off being stored on edge, like books on a shelf or records, rather than flat. They warp pretty easily.

[Shostak]

I outfitted the megahex box with some separators fashioned out of stiff cardboard. These create areas to hold singe, double, triple, and megahex shapes. The larger shapes lie in the remaining space, largest to smallest from bottom up. I've not yet added the megahexes from the TFT Adventures, but I think there will be room for them so that everything will remain in a single storage box, which lets it still fit in the big Legacy Edition box. When the Decks of Destiny arrive, the storage solution will have to be redesigned.

[Brazen Hussey]

Good going Lars, and a good suggestion for all of us.

For Gloomhaven rooms I've used an accordion file organizer and it worked well. I plan on trying that for the larger megahex rooms for TFT.

[larsdangly]

I got a double set of the initial MH offering, to which I just added the Adventures MH's. I'm glad I did because I really enjoy creating interesting dungeony spaces on the fly. But it is a lot of stuff to organize without a system. I also learned too late that all of my counter trays are exactly 2 mm too long to fit into the big who-knows-what-it-is-for box in the legacy edition...which I had planned on using for counter trays. But, that's not such a big problem, as counter trays naturally stack and look pretty tidy on the shelf as-is.

[Skarg]

Yeah, I still use my counter boxes from the 1980's. Fishing tackle boxes, parts boxes, sewing supply boxes, pill cases, all work well, and become more and more needed the more counters you have.

I tend to pre-pick the counters for groups and factions in my campaigns so if they enter combat I have all the counters in one place, rather than having to find the counters for them, even though the unused counters tend to be sorted mostly by weapon types.

As for megahexes, I mostly used medium-sized manila envelopes for those. Though I also stopped using those in preference to large hexmaps, battle mats, and/or blank paper under transparent hex grid overlays.

[ak_aramis]

I put my single MH into a small ziplock, and that, plus the larger ones, into a roughly 12x9x2.5 inch plastic case.

I've got two MH sets, and they fit the box just fine.